Tony Blair makes £1m a month from private speeches as offers flood in for the former PM

Monday 17 December 2007 00:52 BST

Tony Blair is earning up to £1million a month as an after-dinner speaker, it was claimed last night.

The former Prime Minister is delivering about five speeches each month in his "retirement", and can regularly command up to £200,000 per engagement, it is said.

Only his friend, ex-U.S, president Bill Clinton, has earned such an amount from speaking engagements.

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Public speaking: Tony Blair is earning up to £1m a month

Mr Blair has long banked on the lecture circuit as his main source of cash because his role as Middle East envoy for international powers is unpaid.

Only expenses and office costs are provided by the Quartet of the U.S, EU, UN and Russia, to cover a base in the Colony Hotel in Jerusalem and flights around the region.

The cash from his lectures will go towards paying off the mortgage on the Blairs' Connaught Square home in London, which is costing £16,000 a month.

The ex-PM has signed a £5million deal with Random House to write his Number 10 memoirs - but they are thought to be two years away.

Mrs Blair's memoirs are expected next year.

Last month, Mr Blair was criticised for making a "boring" speech in China, for which he earned £240,000.

But this does not appear to have greatly diminished his earning power.

In January, he may pocket £500,000 for three speeches in four days in America and Canada.

Some are paying as much as £1,200 to hear him speak at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, near Los Angeles, for the American Jewish University.

They will join Mr Blair at a cocktail reception and dinner afterwards and get the chance to have a picture taken with him.

The next day, tickets costing up to £500 are on sale to hear him speak at the Californian millionaires' resort of Indian Wells.

Two days later, Mr Blair will be in Toronto, Canada, to speak to 2,000 paying guests at the Westin Harbour Castle.

Yet friends fear his health could suffer if Mr Blair does not tone down his hectic lifestyle.

He exercises for more than an hour every day at the luxury Colony Hotel and is said to be drinking strong coffee again - even though Mrs Blair ordered him to stop after his operation for an irregular heartbeat in 2004.

But some believe he is unable to switch to a more leisurely pace.

Mr Blair's former agent John Burton said: "He's worse than he was before.

"I think Cherie thought she'd see a bit more of him when he finished as Prime Minister, but he's in Britain about two days a month."

Financially, however, the hard work may well pay off.

Tim Parrott, of the Desert Town Hall lecture series, who is involved in the organisation of Mr Blair's lectures next month, said the ex-PM's box office allure is currently greater than that of Bill Clinton.

The former U.S. president earned £15million in the four years after leaving the White House.